Category Archives: Funny

Gallinule War!

by Amy Posted on 21 June 2013

It’s been hot. High-in-the-mid-90s-F-every-day hot. The humidity has been hovering at about 100% at dawn, so it feels just a wee bit oppressive. Maybe the heat wave was behind the aggressive behavior I saw among a few Common Gallinules at Gemini Springs last week? An overcast sky really kept the air saturated. It was sticky and uncomfortable. And everybody was kung-fu fighting, basically.

One pair was already going at it when a second pair started to mix it up. You can see the bird in the center of the photo spewing forth a murderous war cry. A millisecond later – BATTLE!

Gallinule War!

Gallinule War!

Scuffles were sometimes initiated by aggressive wing-waving and sunken body position.

Gallinule War!

Gallinule War!

After the flapping, the big guns came out – those crazy gallinule feet.

Gallinule War!

Gallinule War!

Gallinule War!

You can see posturing, grabbing, flapping and finally what I would call sailboating in this video, which was taken after all of the above photos were snapped.

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My visitors came from *where* in May 2013?!?!

by Amy Posted on 3 June 2013

Here are the highs and lows revealed in last month’s Statcounter logs for my little birding blog…

Some righteous dude or dudette searched for bigby birding rules. Yes it does. Rock on.

Someone wondered, are there hummingbireds in cook county Illinios? I love the chance to plug me a little eBird. Yes, there are hummingbirds in Cook County, IL.

And then someone else wanted to know do northern saw-whet owls live in Chicago to which I say: eBird has the answer. Unless you were wondering about non-releaseable education birds. I only know of one, Boopie.

To the folks looking for a brownish duck with red beak and a duck with red beak, I’m hoping you found what you were looking for. My best guess would be Black-bellied Whistling Duck if your search was anywhere near Florida USA.

Someone wanted to know: do american goldfinches remember things? What a wonderful thing to wonder. 🙂

Someone searched for field museum free admission bring bird… does that mean raptor handlers get in for free? Sweet.

To the person searching for Gardening robins nest in our arborvites, should we remove it?: NO

To the person wondering American robin chicks affect of taking picture, Cornell’s NestWatch site is a wonderful resource for information on nest monitoring. Read the educational materials and take the online certification to become a nest monitor and share your data with ornithologists.

Two searches that made me giggle: what is a wood duck afraid of? and duck imprinting on high school student.

That last one seems oddly specific so it struck me as funny, but in reality a bird imprinting on a person is a serious matter. It is illegal to take a wild bird and keep it. It is nesting season now and I was extremely disturbed to find this search in my Statcounter: what to feed a baby bard owl. Two days later from the same IP address came the following search: how often do you feed a baby barred owl. An IP lookup tells me the search came from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Dear person who is caring for a baby Barred Owl in Cedar Rapids: Please get your bird to a licensed bird rehabilitation center as soon as possible. If your bird has become imprinted it cannot be released into the wild as it would never be able to fend for itself. Licensed rehabbers can properly care for injured or abandoned wild birds, and can facilitate nest replacement if feasible. No one can raise a bird better than its own parent. Please don’t keep the owl. Thank you.

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My visitors came from *where* in April 2013?!?!

by Amy Posted on 1 May 2013

April was a blur, and May is starting out just as hectic! Here’s a quick post to share a few gems from April’s stat-logs.

I had a lot of traffic coming from searches related to audubon park deltona. There was an official opening dedication for Audubon Park in April and it seems the park is neither unloved nor unknown. Later in the month I discovered that park access from the East Regional Rail Trail is now open, too! Woo hoo! Other related searches included city of deltona fl public works; deltona audobon park; ledford stormwater lush volusia Audubon; ledford water treatment volusia; and deltona “audubon park” west volusia audubon.

I still follow the Illinois birding scene online (as much as I can as a cyber-bystander living out of state) so I was surprised to see reported magnificent frigatebird in illinois 2013 and anyone seen a magnificent frigate bird in illinois 2013 in my stats, seemingly coming out of nowhere. Do any Illinois friends have some insight on this?

Someone searching for ospreys invading red-tailed hawks nests? was kind of wondering the same thing I was, apparently. I don’t think I previously revealed that our new house is within sight of the bizarre raptor drama nest (it’s just off the back yard), but I have not had the opportunity to keep tabs on this nest to see exactly what is going on. I know I see Osprey flying around back there, making a racket sometimes. I saw a Red-tailed Hawk perched above the nest again a couple of days ago, though.

As always, there were a few typos in the stats that made me chuckle: is this pegieon sun bathing or injured? (probaby sunbathing – they can contort their wings all kinds of crazy sometimes); vagrabt birds in florida; do loom migrate in illinois; all pigions breeds (really? is p-i-g-e-o-n so hard?); and himemade bird feeder poles.

To the person who searched for florida caterpillar identifier: I hope you eventually found this.

To the person searching for hoary redpoll meme: I hope you found this.

Finally, to the person searching for limpkin bird how to get rid of it: seriously!? I have been trying to figure out what kind of situation one could have where a Limpkin might be causing a problem. I have a vivid imagination so I can come up with some scenarios, but they’re all pretty outlandish. This search stings on a personal level because I only managed to get my FOY (First Of Year) Limpkin on April 24th. So if you need to “get rid” of a Limpkin, please send it to me. I’m really running low this year.

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Sweet Tooth

by Amy Posted on 11 April 2013

Sometimes birds other than hummingbirds are attracted to nectar feeders. A male Baltimore Oriole knocked my socks off the other day when I spied him on our hummingbird feeder in our back yard. As soon as he flew off I put an oriole feeder out for him but he didn’t return.

The other day I was hoping to see the Rufous Hummingbird that had been visiting Mead Gardens in Winter Park, but found this fellow instead. American Goldfinches winter in this area; soon this little migrant must be on his way. Filling up on some sweets before departure…

Sweet Tooth

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My visitors came from *where* in March 2013?!?!

by Amy Posted on 2 April 2013

A quick little post for last month’s update! March was busy and April is going to be even more so!

To the person who searched for just hatched baby kingfisher: I hope you checked Flickr? Belted Kingfishers nest in burrows so I imagine spotting chicks isn’t too easy.

To the person who searched for are long eared owls seen in chicago: I’m sure you learned the answer is YES!

To the people who searched for yellow headed vulture pet and eurasian vulture pet: NO.

To the people who searched for audubon park deltona and audibon park lush rd deltona: If you have been birding at the park, I would love to hear from you!!

To the person who searched for is a peregrine warm or cold blooded: Seriously?

To the people searching for creative commons cat catching bird and cat with dead bird: I hope you found the Keep Cats Indoors Flickr Group and/or the Cats Outdoors “what i really do” shareable graphic (shown below). (Side note: I was happy to see this image shared on Facebook quite a bit lately, possibly in reaction to the whole Ted Williams/Audubon thing).

Cats Outdoors (original)

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Clutzy egret loses lunch

by Amy Posted on 26 March 2013

It’s cold here in central Florida! Relatively speaking. We should hit record low temperatures in the area tonight, when the thermometer dips below 40F. Brr!

Snowy Egret

On a chilly walk at Gemini Springs this morning, I watched a Snowy Egret working on a fish. The bird already had lunch in its beak when I first saw it, but it let the fish slip away. I slowed down the initial chase at the end of the clip — you can see the fish make its escape!

I watched the egret a bit longer but lunch was not recaptured before I had to move on.

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Posted in Behavior, Funny, Gemini Springs, Video | Leave a comment

Meme Monday: Harlem Shake

by Amy Posted on 4 March 2013

If you’re not active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you may be missing out on the joy of Internet memes. A meme (rhymes with cream) is “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” An Internet meme can be as short as a catch-phrase or as complex as a video clip. A lot of memes are simple graphics which are altered to suit different topics. When a meme is hot, you can be sure there will be variants related to birds or birding.

In February 2013, the music track “Harlem Shake” by artist Baauer spawned a series of funny, short dance videos. The typical Harlem Shake clip is usually about a half minute long. The standard video format is to begin with a single person dancing to the song, surrounded by others who are ignoring the dancing person. This is followed by a rough cut to lots of people dancing to the song, often wearing funny or strange costumes and brandishing odd props. An early parody video went viral in the first week of February, earning over 7 million hits on YouTube in a week’s time. By the middle of February, there were about 12K Harlem Shake videos posted on YouTube.

With this level of virality, of course there are Harlem Shake clips featuring birds. There are a good number of videos featuring parrots. Many bird clips don’t follow the standard format — a single bird is shown dancing, as in this clip featuring a Black-crowned Night-Heron, or the venue changes completely from one scene to the next, as in this European Starling murmuration video (which is pretty funny, anyway). Another clip, called Harlem shake (duck edition) uses this original video set to the music. I had seen the original clip before so I knew what was going to happen but it still made me giggle — especially since I knew the birds would all end up alright (and upright!).

I thought the following Harlem Shake video was just about the only bird-type one worth sharing here. The timing is pretty good in this clip, which begins with a single pigeon feasting on some seed. As the bass is about to drop, more pigeons arrive and a feeding frenzy takes the place of crazy dancing. The video runs too long as the meme goes, but if you watch to the end you’ll see how fast a flock of pigeons can devout a big pile of seed. Impressive!

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My visitors came from *where* in February 2013?!?!

by Amy Posted on 1 March 2013

Here are the highs and lows found in last month’s Statcounter logs for this site…

I’m not the only one wondering about pellets possibly produced by ibises as there were searches for ibis producing pellets, ibis bird coughing up green pellets, and can an ibis produce a pellet. By the way, Cornell’s Birds of North America Online is great for finding answers to these questions. 🙂

I’m glad this search brought someone to my site, but I do wish more people would use eBird to answer questions like where was the green-tailed towhee found in tampa florida dec 31, 2011. (Here’s a hint)

Oh, another one for eBird! I wonder in what season yellow rumped warbler brevard florida? (Big hint)

Cute, sad, strange, and funny typos and silly searches: longheaded shrike; loggerhead shriker; migration patter; my favarite bird; atarve rock eagles; srarved rock eagle watch; and straved rock eagle.

I wish I could help folks trying to identify birds. Visitors came via searches for yellow birds northern illinois (not a whole lot besides warblers), yellow birds at animal kingdom (shouldn’t be too hard to ID these), animal kingdom at disney bird with green plumage (ditto), midwestern bird look like hawk short beaked (It looked like a hawk? Well it probably was a hawk, silly!), bird like a eagle (huh?), and cute tire birds (HUH?).

More HUH? searches: +plumbing color spoon-billed sandpiper; disturbed birds; and my baby was crying and I hear a barred owl after. Whoa.

Finally, what a nice thing to see in my search statistics: vulture activities for kids. Oh, I hope they found what they were looking for!

Previous posts in this semi-annual monthly series are here: search terms.

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Meme Monday: Hitler Reacts

by Amy Posted on 14 January 2013

If you’re not active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you may be missing out on the joy of Internet memes. A meme (rhymes with cream) is “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” An Internet meme can be as short as a catch-phrase or as complex as a video clip. A lot of memes are simple graphics which are altered to suit different topics. When a meme is hot, you can be sure there will be variants related to birds or birding.

Der Untergang (US: Downfall) is a 2004 German film about the last days of Adolf Hitler’s life. The success of the film reached meme proportions in August 2006 with the release of the first parody “Hitler Reacts” clip. Since then, one particularly heated scene from De Untergang has been used countless times to parody Hitler reacting to everything from the U.S. mortgage crisis to Usain Bolt breaking the 100 meter dash world record. And now, Hitler Reacts to Missing Hoary Repoll in Colorado:


Hoary Redpolls are typically found much further north; the recent Colorado sighting is the state’s first.

UPDATE September 18, 2013

Here is a brilliant version of the meme uploaded in September, 2013: Hitler gets 700.

UPDATE January 25, 2014

Wren ID problems make the Führer angry in Hitler Reacts to a Stub-tailed Wren in Boulder:

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Spit and see if I care. Spit!

by Amy Posted on 27 April 2012

Mnemonics are tricks to aid in memorization. Birders use mnemonics to learn and remember bird sounds. Putting words to bird calls and songs makes them easier to recall. Some (most?) of them are quite funny.

The White-eyed Vireo has one of my favorite bird song mnemonics. What do you think? Does this sound like expectoration encouragement to you? Spit and see if I care. Spit!

Another mnemonic of this song is Quick, give me a rain check! (or, if you’re a Bill Bryson fan, Quick, give me a barf bag!).

According to Florida’s Birds, White-eyed Vireos are “perpetual singers.” That seems about right to me. I hear them quite often in the neighborhood and at Gemini Springs. I found this one this morning on the way to birding at Gemini.

Spit and see if I care. Spit!
White-eyed Vireo | Spring-to-spring Trail, DeBary FL

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